2009 TGN Reader’s Choice results
The final round of voting is over and the winners in the 2009 Tabletop Gaming News Reader’s Choice Awards have been picked. Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone for your votes, comments and nominations.
The winners are:
Sci-fi Miniature
Corvus Belli Infinity Lunokod Sputnik
Fantasy Miniature
Privateer Press Wrong Eye & Snapjaw
Alternative Adventure Miniature
Smart Max Major Dreadful & Winston
Historical Miniature
Perry Miniatures 28mm plastic French Napoleonic Heavy Cavalry
Terrain or Accessory
WorldWorks Games Himmelveil Streets
Rules or Expansion
Wyrd Miniatures Malifaux
The results of the previous rounds of voting can still be found on each category page.
- Sci-fi Miniature
- Fantasy Miniature
- Historical Miniature
- Alternate Adventure Miniature
- Game/Rules expansion
- Terrain/Accessory product
If you’d like you can still check out the nominations pages. Comments have been closed on those pages but you can still read the comments posted as part of the nomination process.
Oh dear — I’ve still not painted everything I bought from last year’s nominations! I look forward to seeing what comes up in this year’s batch.
Zac – I saw on Facebook you are sending these to the jury for shortlisting TOMORROW.
Could you at least announce that you are cutting the nomination period short PRIOR to doing so?!
You did set the cut off at December 12th….
You saw that I was sending the Editor’s Choice shortlist off tomorrow
oh, bugger!
you and your clever/confusing competitions… ::shame::
Speed Rally by Glory Games should really be on the list to be nominated.
In fair practice, it should not be denied as a nomination.
Are the people running the “2009 TGN Reader’s Choice nominations” allowing favoritism and discrimination.
I have to run two awards systems, post the news, have a life and then look after his twin girls.
And I also spent most of last night trying to fix two message board installations.
I’m sorry that I haven’t updated the nomination list yet but I have a lot to do.
How about you assume that people are busy or have some other less odious reason for your nomination not appearing instead of tossing on your tinfoil hat and making these disparaging comments about my ethics?
In case you haven’t noticed the nominations for everyone else haven’t appeared on the list at the top of the rules and expansions nomination post either.
Zac – you should know by now that “Internet = Conspiracy!”.
:-)
Keep up the good work!
My votes are in! I’m excited to see who wins! Hopefully Darkson takes the best rules Occult and Mantic win the accessory for their bag! Two of the best things I got this year :D
Thanks for doing this Zac. :)
Good work Zac – I’ve been having fun looking through all the categories :-)
I did however notice that ‘Kabuki Models Mater Lacrimosa’ appears to have the wrong link at the moment.
Fixed
Votes all posted – some excellent stuff this year. Interesting “self observation” – I found myself removing any contender that I couldn’t find the picture to easily – had to catch myself in some cases. It was most notable in the case of GW (not a GW bash, but an example of how there new website design impedes casual viewing IMHO).
AJC
Zac – on the Historicals, the Perry’s Heavy Cav’ links to a Light Infantry picture.
Thanks. Its fixed now
thanks
This is the first year that I’ve really paid any serious attention to the nomination/voting process. It’s really hard! There are a lot of really pretty figs out there, it’s hard to pick just one!
It’s also interesting to see how different sculpts appeal to different people.
What an amazing crop of nominees this year. I had to vote for This Quar’s War, since it’s such a refreshing, thoughtful take on tabletop gaming, but all the candidates were top shelf.
I’ve been painting and gaming for about 15 years now and it really amazes me how far figures have come. There are so many great independent outfits that really pushing the envelope. Once upon a time, I would have put in votes for mostly GW stuff, but much of the indie work seems to be eclipsing it.
Has it really been a year already. I hope to paint and play more in 2010. Of course I slept through the start of Darren’s 40K league, well laid in bed really…
I always seem to have too much other stuff to do too, so yeah, updating websites sometimes isn’t the be all end all of one’s existance.
I’m just wondering if everyone knows that in the Alternate Adventure category the SmartMax figs are all 54mm. Yes, they are beautiful figs, (I voted for the Major and I hope he wins,) but the reason you’re seeing such incredible detail on the figs is simply because at 54mm it’s much easier to pack it in there. Just thought I’d put that up as a disclaimer in case some people were unaware of it and thought they were seeing the most detailed 28mm figs ever.
The concepts would be as interesting in a smaller scale. It’s unfortunate that the size will keep so many players (if not painters) away.
I hope they come out with some heroic 28mm someday. I love their stuff but don’t find any temptation for miniatures that scale for gaming purposes unless they can double for large creatures of a smaller scale. They’d make great display pieces but 54mm feels too big for gaming to me, which is why my vote went to a different miniature.
Smart Max miniatures actually are 1:35 scale, that is to say 50mm scale.
They aren’t actually taller than many “creatures” from other ranges. However they are far better in terms of fineness and quality.
Damn, no DP9!?!?
Us Heavy Gear fans always arrive to the table too late. We’ll have to get the Polar forces more organized for next year’s nominees!
There should be a large/vehicle/artillery model category and an infantry model category that are scale specific for each genre. Not really fair to lump them all together within a single genre as complexity and detail are easier to create when an artist is given more mass with which to sculpt.
Lumping in that gigantic Forgeworld Mega Dread in with Rebel Minis 15mm Earth Force Marine Infantry is really no contest is it ?
I was surprised to not see any nominations for large/vehicle/artillery models in the historical category as there have been a multitude released this year.
The fact that there are 8 out of 21 sci-fi nominations for Corvus Beli Models is highly suspect.
In the future limit the nominations to one nomination for each genre category per Company.
Really disappointing to see the incredible small number of actual terrain piece nominations
Paper terrain, Sculpted terrain, accessory products, and transport cases each need separate categories. Since when do basing materials and army transport bags count as artistically creative terrain pieces? Heck, why not lump in Woodland scenics and Noch Scenic Express products in this category as well ???
Game/Rules expansion need separate genre, role play, and miniatures categories. It’s really going to boil down to what each fan’s personal tastes in tabletop games are isn’t it? No tabletop miniature board game nominations here? How strange.
Or it might be that they have a lot of fans and make a lot of really good sci-fi models. No need to look for a conspiracy where the quality of the product provides an answer
As soon as someone pays me to run this site full-time we’ll look into that ;-)
You’re right, the Earth Force Marines will probably take it
How many did you nominate?
See my earlier comment. :-)
Incursion and Space Hulk aren’t tabletop miniature board games?
Maybe if you released the news of next years polls early, say a month before nominations, then the companies can have their own forums can have a sub-vote, to choose their official nomination, like the national contests before Eurovision?
We do this in December and we’ve been doing it for three years now so I think that everyone knows that we do it but it might not hurt to post something in advance to get people working on nominations
I don’t know if that tis the solution. The more organized ones could easily just gain more nominations, and the hidden gems would get passed over again.
Really, its up to the readers of TGN to nominate what they want to see win. So mark your calendar for next year so you don’t miss out again!
-Tim
I think you have unreasonable expectations of what these awards should be. The editors (mostly Zac) put in a lot of extra unpaid time to organize these. If you can arrange for financing I’m sure Zac and the gang would do everything you suggest and more.
Nominations are based on fan input. Its very transparent. Go read the comments in the nomination posts and you’ll see everything that was nominated was put up for voting. If something isn’t there that you wanted, its because you didn’t get your nomination in. Mark your calendar for next year.
-Tim
Minor complaints aside, I greatly appreciate the time and effort Zac (et al) puts in on this and would like to say thank you.
I certainyl appreciate your efforts Zac…. Just one question… In the event of a three way tie fro fifth place in the run off, what do you do? ;)
Are you trying to get me into trouble? ;-)
The TGN Award Jury votes on which product to include.
While you run the risk of balkanising the awards into a million little pieces, it would seem more fair to compare oranges to oranges — new games vs. new games, expansions v expansions, 54mm v similar scale, etc. In the mean time, keep up the good work.
PS — is anyone else having trouble voting? I just went in for the first time and couldn’t get the ballot to come up, only the results
You need to be logged in. If you aren’t the site serves you a static HTML page which your system is probably caching.
Try clearing your cache or force refreshing the page after you have logged in
If that doesn’t work use the contact form to email me
That did it.
Excellent
Wrong Eye & Snapjaw ftmfw.
Hells yeah!
eh, the man gives of his time to put this all together and it’s conspiracies, secret bias and tears in the ice cream tub. Some people will whinge about anything I guess but really, if you don’t like it go run your own awards and let us know how easy it is ;)
Yeah, what he said ;-)
Man, I was sure hoping Red Box Games would make the final cut. Feeling sortof “meh” about the fantasy spread. Stoked that Zombiesmith made it into sci-fi!
Malifaux for best overall!!!!
I’m a bit disappointed the mantic bag didn’t get in the top 5 Terrain/Accessory catagory.
@Jim – agreed on the fantasy lineup, I’d have definitely put a vote down for the screaming bell if it had made it.
With voting I specifically avoided any company that sent out emails encouraging people to vote for them (yeah, I got quite a few :P).
I got a few too, must just show how popular this site is!
Very poor way to distort the results by doing so. I don’t want to value the quality of the products, these might be fine however it’s just sad if products of larger companies – who have a larger fanbase naturally – try to make use of their highly frequented boards. Now at privateerpress-forum is a link to encourage people voting for their miniatures / rule books. If these people wouldn’t frequent tabletopgaming news normally it’s just wrong. These people don’t seem to understand the spirit of such ‘readers choice awards’. Reduces the value of the award :(
We have a link on our forum letting players know that we are in the running. Is that wrong? Not sure why it would be? Is it wrong to want your fans to support you?
Officially? No. People are entitled to their own opinions though. In any case the issue here is email solicitations.
The only company I have asked to remove a link from a website was Privateer Press a few years ago as I thought it was an unfair advantage given the size of the company.
Other than that, I don’t mind if companies help advertise the contest to their customers. Most of the solicitations I have seen have also specifically mentioned that people should vote however they wanted in any case.
So just how narrow was the initial window to submit nominations and when was it ?
Technically the calendar year has not ended and new releases are still being announced.
I still have trouble believing this was the best the entire industry produced this year.
Earthquake’s weekly incoming videos on the eqnws channel on youtube I think are a far more accurate representation of the highest quality the entire industry has produced this year.
http://www.youtube.com/user/eqnws
I do very much appreciate the Job Tabletop Gaming News does reporting what is going on in the industry and always have. I am also a huge fan of The Miniatures Page.
However, it is incredibly disappointing and disturbing to see so many great releases completely passed over on TGN.
This is all taking place at a hectic time of year when many in the community do not have time to log in and participate nor is adequate time being allowed to pass for nominations and voting to take place. It’s all too rushed and the entire process is completely flawed and in no way represents the best of the best for 2009.
Initial nominations were open from Dec 5th to Dec 11th. As with the last few years, the TGN awards cover releases from Dec to Dec as a year.
If you think there is some news we are missing then please feel free to submit it. If you’re simply referring to the products that have made the Reader’s choice awards then I think the title speaks for itself. The awards are little more than an Internet poll run for a bit of fun for our readers. Sorry that you consider it “completely flawed”, but we can see no way to improve things without creating a lot of additional work for ourselves. Again, this is for fun, there’s no grand prize.
I don’t know what to say other than this is the Reader’s Choice Awards and the readers have nominated the products they though were the best/most fun/most interesting.
You can disagree with the opinions expressed but at the end of the day your opinions are just as valid as any others and I’m sure that there are people that would disagree with picks you might make.
There is no universal opinion and for everyone that likes a product there are just as many people that don’t.
I’d welcome you to come back next December and nominate your favourite products next year and vote as well.
The more input and opinions we have the better the awards will be and its only through fan nominations that the scope of the awards widens and we all get a better picture of what the industry has to offer.
Look forward to your nominations next December! :-)
Well, readers nominate, readers vote, and it’s Reader’s Choice. If it is completely flawed, then it is because the readers are completely flawed . . . wait, now that I think about it, that is a bit insulting.
You just made that up. There is no way you could know if many in the community don’t have time to log on.
Distressing? Disturbing? Mighty strong words kemosabe. I usually reserve those for things like this rotten economy and what I see on the nightly news respectively. Not words I usually associate with our FUN hobby that revolves around little plastic and metal toy soldiers and other childish joys. Well, my wife sometimes uses those words to describe our hobby :-).
Don’t be a party pooper homes! Be one of the cool kids and just chill ;-) If you just gotta rant, go do it over at TMP. They like to take it like that over there.
Hey, have you ever heard of Frothers? you should pop in over there too and have a chat. Nice folks!
Yup, definitely head over to Frothers! Or buy decaf or something…
Its a readers’ choice awards and the nominations were placed by the TGN readership. Its not some conspiracy against x, y or z manufacturer to exclude their products, it just reflects the preferences of the site users.
Zac and the team deserve every credit for organising the awards and putting in all the time and effort!
To be honest, a few complaints about the open nomination sytem are nothing compared with the storm over electronic vote rigging from last year so I’d say congratulations to the TGN team for getting it sorted out this year, the ‘registered site member only’ voting system seems much better :-)
One thing I’d suggest for readers who want to place nominations in December but don’t have the time to trawl past news articles in a short space of time so near to Thanksgiving & Christmas would be to save the urls of news articles you like over the year in a text file on your desktop so that you can quickly review them in December instead of going through every article for the year.
Indeed, if you want to whinge like an octogenarian with kids on his lawn, head over to Frothers. They’re not shy about how biased they are either, good chance they will also be fans of the minis/systems that you are miffed were not included ;)
Whinge is perhaps a bit rough. I think its fair to critique and I think that he is doing it in a respectful fashion (certainly he is approaching this in the way that I like to see people critique products) so describing it as “whinging” probably isn’t fair or accurate.
Sometimes people come from a different perspectives in the hobby and I think that if you do then we have probably missed some important products.
Its to be expected and I’d rather that we tried to get people like QXNINE as part of the community here to help us expand the products we see nominated.
Asking people to head over to other sites and complain isn’t helpful and I think that we all need to be a bit more open to getting criticisms from other people in the hobby.
I know I’m going to try to be a bit more open to it myself.
Well, I’ve voted. Nice one Zac. Thanks for organising it again.
As ever there were one or two things that make the cut that surprised me, but hey, that’s democracy for ya!
Having cast my vote, I’m not surprised at what seems to be winning in each category. All seem to be worthy, even if personally I might have voted for other items in some cases.
In any case, in a flawed world this is the best we have, and I am greatful for the opportunity to look back at some great releases which in many cases I had forgotten all about!
It’s Reader’s choice. It is exactly what is was meant and expected to be.
It’s always good to be recognised. Let’s enjoy the formula!
If you want a representative mass voting, choose a place where 100K votes are cast to get the spread.
How about hiding the vote totals until the very end to avoid influencing the final vote count? Even the totals for the preliminary round should not be seen until the final votes are in.
I’ll see if it is an option in the polling software I am using
When I was voting… I did notice some odd voting patterns as well. No one’s winning a trip to Hawaii if they win are they? I find people are rather silly… especially us gamers. Hiding vote totals might not be a bad idea though. I don’t look at them until after I’ve voted because I don’t want to be influenced by the majority. And from what I’ve seen I am the minority… :) I would think that even being nominated is nice… since some of the nominees in the first round I hadn’t even seen and will now check out after the holidays. I do like this feature at the end of the year even if it’s not totally accurate some time. I would hope it’s all in good fun. Thanks Zac! :)
I like the hidden results for polls too, till they are over. :D
I like seeing how the voting is going, but don’t feel I am influenced in either direction by which is winning or behind. If my favorite isn’t in the lead, well it doesn’t surprise me to find out that most people are wrong :p hehe ;)
Wow, Snapjaw and friend sure got a lot of votes near the end.
It only won by two votes… it was a very close call…
They sure did
Congrats to the winners and to all the finalists. It’s been great to see some of these products again, I’d forgotten about many of them over the past 12 months.
My thanks to Zac and Grant et al for organizing this once again. A well run competition and yet another reason why I like TGN so much!
First of all, its that time of the year where we thank Zac and everyone who supports him in his managing/posting/operating of the site. it is an incredible resource and one that is perhaps one of the most visionary and informative tools on a previously (apparently)stagnant and misinformed community.
I’ve known i’m a gaming freak for years, but for as long as i can look back, finding out about games was difficult (i live in Venezuela), expensive (subscription to specialized magazines) and biased (publications where usually aligned with a particular publisher).
TTGN has allowed me to find out more about my hobby, making ME a better fan, i’ve been able to support many small companies by purchasing their products that would’ve gone commpletely under the radar if it wasnt for TTGN.
My votes for the readers choice are now based in different factors than JUST the games I play, or the Figures I like personally, but are more geared towards what contributed most to the category. I can do this because i check the site daily (almost thrice a day actually, i did say i’m a freak…).
The process is imperfect, and nothing actually can claim the title, but if you look at the nominations posts, theres a lot of friendly banter and discussion prior to setting them, so it goes very well with the spirit of the site.
So in the end, manufacturers who think dind’nt get served in the nominations should find ways to be more active and visible on the site (doenst take money!), fans of games and figures need to READ and PARTICIPATE more if they want their opinions to be heard, hence included in the polls, heck, check out my confusing nomination post, even i got heard…
thanks again zac, you are making us better gamers/hobbyists/painters be keeping this going, and please be certain that your contribution to all gaming is not going unnoticed by manufacturers and players, only GW…
cannt wait to see the editor awards.
best.
GS
Well thanks very much! You’re too kind :-)
I am in the process of writing the Editor’s Choice Awards article and I hope to have that done and ready to post after Boxing Day.
The twins might delay that a bit as they are quite excited about Xmas. And we haven’t even put any presents under the tree yet :-)
Excellent Stuff!
I only picked one winner, but they are all champions even nevertheless :)
Thanks to Zac et al. for this annual “retrospective”.
Thanks for the work Zac & whomever.
Nothing I voted for won, so if nothing else this poll helped prove to me that everyone that’s not me is an idiot =P
Happy to see GW was shut out this year! Take notice GW!
Shut out? With their remake of a remake of an old 1st edition boardgame? I don’t see a lot of love for GW on non-GW sites in general, so that wasn’t a big surprise.
Consider they had 9 nominations and all and their Awesome Terrain kist lost out to a Cardstock nomination, I think it says something. Surprising? Not at all.
To a pretty damn impressive cardstock terrain piece, it needs be said. The Fortress of Redemption simply didn’t cut the mustard.
Yup. I don’t think it was a case of GW ‘taking that’ rather there’s more out there than just GW these days. Think of how many things were released over the year, still impressive to have 9 nominations vs. all the other company releases for 2009.